Why God Isn't Like the Boyfriend or Girlfriend Who Cheated on You

As we drove up to the house, my stomach turned. I wanted to throw up.

My girlfriend had told me two days earlier that she'd kissed another dude, but I couldn't believe it. I just couldn't.

So, I thought I'd get my best friend to drive me over to where I thought she was on the following Friday night, and see for myself.

Surely enough, there was her car. And his car.

Furious, I slammed the window as I looked at her holding his hand. I'm not gonna let this happen. I'm not gonna let this happen.

We drove off because she saw me through the window, and I wouldn't doubt it if she could see the fire in my eyes.

I was hysterical. I couldn't believe it. The girl I'd sacrificed so much for, given so much, even traded my friends for, was now with another guy. My heart sank lower and lower as the night passed. I felt like I had lost the only thing important in life.

But I wasn't gonna let it happen.

So, I increased the gifts. I increased the phone calls. I increased the emails and letters.

I'm not gonna let it happen. I'm not gonna let it happen.

Eventually, she had to tell me to let go because I was trying to win over an affection that wasn't there. I was trying to appease a girl who couldn't possibly be appeased by me. She'd found another love.

When this reality set in, I didn't want to ever love again. Or be loved.

I imagine most of us have had this sort of experience before.

Doesn't it trip up our psyche? Our emotions? Our spirituality?

We give and give and give, staying pretty much blind to the others' faults, and when it comes down to it, we can't win for losing. There's another lover on the horizon.

As human beings, we can't help but connect our human experiences, even project them, onto what it would look like to be in a relationship with God.

How often we find ourselves in the same dark place, trying to win back the affection of our Lover, because we're pretty sure that God's seeing someone else right now.

Or maybe someone told us a long time ago that there were certain things we had to do in order to get God to love us. Or maybe the whole concept of being in relationship with God turns us around, because every time we think of relationship, we think of things like breakups and cheating and broken hearts.

And so the best we can do is treat God as if God's a girlfriend or boyfriend who we've decided doesn't love us as much as we love God.

And so we either give and give and give

or

completely give up on the whole God thing because we just can't win for losing.

But what if God isn't like an unappeasable girlfriend? What if God isn't like a boyfriend who's found another woman?

What if God wasn't like the girl who kept nagging her boyfriend to send her more letters, knowing in her heart that she had found another?

Do we really want a God who's constantly on the lookout for someone better than us?

How easy it is to apply to our spiritual problems the same broken strategies we apply to our human relationship problems.

The truth is, we can't make God love us anymore than we can make another human being love us.

The difference is, human beings are screwed up. On good days, we can hardly love 30% of the time.

But the author of Hebrews tells us that we are all purified from sin by the offering that Jesus made of his own body once and for all.

This God is uniquely different than the psychological images that we project onto God based off our human relationship failures. This God is tired of all the letter writing, wooing, and contests for affection.

According to the author, this God doesn't see as as potential mates, as competitors in the spiritual realm of The Bachelor.

This God sees us through the blood of a sacrifice that was made once and for all - for all of us.

Can we believe this?

Can we let our human relationships be as they are and at the same time believe in a God who isn't like the person we're trying to woo or conjure up feelings in?

If we can't, then we'll probably either go mad trying to appease a God who can't be appeased or give up altogether.

But, I've been told all my life that I have to please God.

And whose concept was that? Was it yours?

There was a simplicity in soaking in what somebody else said about God wasn't there? Didn't it just come in as if there were nothing standing in the way?

With the same ease and simplicity, we have the ability to believe differently, to believe in a God who's not waiting on us to appease or woo or satisfy.

So, how do we do that?

Get a piece of paper and write out what your current beliefs are. Then, ask yourself, "Where'd this idea come from?" If it came from someone else, and you like it, then keep it. If it came from someone or some place else, and you don't like it, replace it with what you do like.

After doing this for awhile, your eyes will be opened to how far you've come on the backs of someone else's belief systems.

And the fun part is, you can change your concept.

Today's Focus: Are there any deep, hidden beliefs in my psyche that tell me God is like a lover who constantly needs my attention or else someone else will win her over? Are there any beliefs in my psyche that tell me God is nagging or unapproachable or demanding or loves with conditions?

Why Talking About the Blood of Jesus is Weird to us

"His blood makes us fully clean from the things we have done."

When I was in high school, a couple of friends and I were working on a skit to do in Young Life. I played the role of Quebert while my buddy played the role of Cletus.

Over the course of a month, we developed a narrative about how we were two rednecks who lived in a trailer with our mama and our pet opossum Ralphie.

The only problem was, we needed to find a opossum so we could take it to our next skit.

So, as any normal person would do (hee hee), we set out the night before to go hunt for a opossum.

We spent hours driving up and down the streets with a spotlight looking for Ralphie. We searched people's yards, trees, and ditches, but couldn't find what we were looking for.

Finally, we saw one about three hours into our search. As soon as the opossum's eyes glimmered in the headlights, we parked the car, jumped out, and started running.

With thoughts of leprosy racing through our heads, we made sure to carry gigs and baseball bats.

The opossum squeezed through a hole in someone's fence, so we jumped the fence and continued our pursuit. The opossum ran under the deck in someone's backyard, so we grabbed the flounder gig (and, if you don't know what that is, imagine a two-pronged spear), and started poking it through the gaps in the deck to make contact with Ralphie.

Finally, Ralphie raced out from under the deck - and, to his own demise - cornered himself in the backyard. He made noises that sounded like demons, which made us want to use the bat.

I won't get into the details of how it actually went down, but we slaughtered Ralphie. We were too afraid to keep him alive because surely he would kill us in our sleep as repayment for not minding our own business.

Looking back on this night, it sounds barbaric and heartless. I have no desire to kill animals anymore unless I'm planning on using them for food.

While this story sounds disgusting and ruthless, all throughout the Bible we have stories of blood being shed - both animals and people. And, what's more confusing is, the blood was used in ritual offerings to God.

Cows and doves and rams and oxen and goats were all slaughtered with their life still in them. And the high priest would take this blood into a place called the Holy of Holies to pour it onto a thing called a Mercy Seat, which symbolized where God sat.

The blood acted as a visual and symbolic atonement of the evil things the priest and all the people had done for that period of time (which meant that people would do more evil things so this same process would need to be repeated again and again and again).

Sound barbaric and ruthless and inhumane?

If you said yes, then you're on the right track.

Fast forward to the book called Hebrews. In this book, the author outlines the whole process of worshiping God and being forgiven. It requires blood, which requires killing something.

But, the author brings in a totally breakthrough concept about a guy named Jesus - who shed blood and who was killed in that day by both the high priests and the Roman government at the time.

The author tells the audience that his blood makes us fully clean from the things we have done.

Does it sound impossible to wrap your head around?

Good.

But for the person listening to this story being read aloud, which was how the book was learned, blood making people fully clean was a completely new concept.

Why?

Because people messed up over and over and over. Therefore, killing animals and pouring their blood out was required over and over and over to make up for the people messing up over and over and over . . . and there was no end to the bloody cycle.

Until, people started talking about this man Jesus in terms of sacrifice, and blood, and atonement, and sins being cast as far as the east is from the west.

While the actual process of killing animals to use their blood to atone for our stupidity isn't used in America, the underlying principle remains: we are being cleaned and atoned by a God who doesn't need our sacrifices.

This God doesn't want another church service that makes people feel guilty.
This God doesn't need anyone else to sacrifice anything out of guilt.

The author is saying that this God did something that completely eradicated the need to ever . . . sacrifice . . . again.

This God has eradicated the need to listen to that voice in our heads that tells us we need to do more to make up for the bad that we've done.

This God took on a whole new concept of how the gods were supposed to be. Love. Forgiveness. Grace.

The author is telling us that we are forgiven, we are being cleansed, and that death is not the final answer.

Taking Life by the Moment

I'm a thought away from losing it.

A second away from making a really bad decision.

An inch away from disaster.

This is what it feels like right now.

And, at the same time, I feel covered and protected.

By no effort of my own, I feel safe and secure, neutral, and balanced while my mind tries to figure out ways to kill me.

Yesterday, I found out where my car was - north Houston in a salvage lot.

I'm missing two things - the title to my car and the flash drive that contains all the work I've done for the past five years.

I searched high and low - through boxes - through the wrecked car - through the trash bags that contained all the stuff from the car - and, nothing.

Not a trace.

I went through everything and found nothing.

And yesterday at work, I had a sales call from a lady who's not taking no for an answer. Getting frustrated with her annoying persistence, I lied to her. I put words into existence that never actually existed. I think she got the message, but I didn't get the message until I sat down last night to examine my day.

It's amazing, looking back through the day, seeing what pisses me off and what doesn't.

The saleslady pissed me off, but the rushed drive through traffic to meet a closing deadline in order to get the piece of paper that would ensure my purchase of a new vehicle didn't piss me off?

When it comes down to it, there are no generalizations about how to maintain an emotional balance. I can't just sit down in the morning and pray, and think that's gonna cover me the whole day. It just doesn't work like that.

Life happens in seconds and inches and thoughts and moments.

And so, with all these strings of seconds and inches and thoughts and moments, I have to have a faith that works 24/7 (or 18/7, depending on how much I sleep).

What happened yesterday is, I wasn't ready to talk to the saleslady on the phone.

But, I was ready to rush through traffic down 610 to get to the salvage yard before they closed.

I need to make amends with that lady, but I have no way of contacting her. I threw away her business card. So, I need to practice showing love and tolerance to people who won't take no for an answer, instead of letting them become renters in my head.

And another point.

The more emotional stressors I have in my life, the more counterbalance I need in the way of spiritual maintenance. And right now, I can't afford to think that I can go a whole day, much less an hour or a minute, without asking God for help.

When I'm not praying and surrendering, I'm like an ox with a yoke strapped over my shoulder blade. I'm carrying this huge tiller behind me, but I'm barely moving. A yoke requires two oxen. If it's just me, I'm going in circles, as the other side of the yoke drags on the ground beside me with nothing to pull it.

And that's how it is with God. My natural state is to tackle the wrenches life throws at me on my own. I can handle all the hard work, and I can think that I'm letting God do the heavy lifting. But really, I'm paying lip service to some spiritual cliche I heard somewhere but don't realize it until I'm back to square one, wondering how I spent so much time and effort only getting . . . here.

So, today, I'm gonna try to be kind and loving towards anyone who doesn't take no for an answer. And, I'm gonna practice a spiritual way of life that takes life in seconds and inches and moments and thoughts.

Today's Action: Be kind to people who don't take no for an answer. Pray by the moment, not the day.

Riding And Redbud

I've been riding with Larry for a month or two.  He got a new bike.  It's been so much fun.  I'm getting my legs again.  Today we looked into League City's "master plan" for trails.  Larry called a park's representative.  We may submit something for connecting a couple trails together.

I began dreaming and went overboard.  I yacked about a bike/kayak ride all the way to Galveston Bay.  People getting out.  Music.  Bike stops.  Going to little dives.  Trails to skate parks.  No need for a car.  No more manic I-45.  I thought the church could make it happen.  I talked too much.  I finally shut up.

Ahh, Redbud.

There is so much drama here.  I could go on and on.  I love them.  I also get annoyed.  I am here.  I hope that it is a good thing that I am here, join in, am and frolic in the madness.

Sometimes it seems good.  Really good.  Other times I wonder if I've given over to simple pleasure.  Sometimes I think I'm giving.  Yesterday I wondered if this were not a blessing from Heaven.  Now I wonder if this is a trick of the devil.  Then again, it's all normal, Norman.

Catcher In The Rye
Tennis
Kids
Concerts
Texans
Refurbish
Urin Town
Horse Power
Vitamins
Conspiracy
Health
Jobs
Beer
Mothers
Brothers
Others

Crud, I'm tired.  I need to show a picture of "Budzilla" - the refurbished BBQ pit.  It's been on.  Goodness gracious.

Good night :-)

Being Driven By Beliefs that Aren't Our Own

When I first started dating my current girlfriend, I was stepping into a love story. It was the classic screwed-up-boy meets screwed-up-girl love story.

Despite the fact that I was new to sobriety, messed up in the head, and aimlessly running my life, I had feelings inside of me that I couldn't avoid. The thing inside of me that I was experiencing drew my attention away from several important points of chaos surrounding the relationship.

But, we were in love. Who cares about anything when they're in love?

And so, after awhile the feelings of being in love faded into feelings of shame and secrecy and doubt and confusion.

We were afraid to openly acknowledge our relationship, because we thought people would disapprove of our decisions.

For about six months, we kept everything on the down low. We would stay apart at social events, never talk to each other on Facebook, and never act like we were a thing. What would people think if we did that?

There came a time though when both of us knew that if we were going to have any chance of sustaining this relationship, we were going to have to accept the craziness that came along with it. Otherwise, we would each have to walk away and put it behind us.

We prayed and talked and confided in some trusted friends about what we were doing and where we were headed.

And, out of chaos and confusion and ugliness came a story of redemption and rescue and hope.

What once seemed hopeless and shameful became a source of strength and growth.

In the beginning, there were a bunch of elementary principles that drove us mad, like

don't have sex before marriage

and

don't lust after a married woman

and

God hates divorce

and

thou shall not commit adultery

and

every waking moment we were together or apart, these sayings that had stuck with us since childhood prevented us from being able to see the forest through the few ugly trees.

We were so driven by the black and white theological principles that we'd accepted early on in life, that we weren't able to see God in the mess.

Instead of being grateful for the gift, we hid it in the closet of shame. Instead of experiencing the joy of relationship, we were bound to the laws that were given us.

It wasn't until we were able to let go of all the knowledge we'd accumulated over the years, that we were able to start seeing the beauty, the storyline, the underlying plot of redemption.

And it wasn't until we were able to see the storyline of redemption that we were able to start growing.

The bar was being raised, and we had to find a way to rise with it.

Many of us are still so stuck on theological concepts that were given to us at a young age, that we've completely thrown out the possibility of a God who loves us in spite of how bad we are or how bad the things are that we've done or are doing.

The world tells us that we are living in sin, or going against God's will, or need to repent, or need to get saved, or whatever.

And so, we get turned off, burnt out, and wiped out by this overwhelming since of failure and hopelessness because we just can't seem to beat the game.

We adopt this mindset that since we are living in sin, we can never experience that God.

And so, we throw away all the unlimited possibilities of experiencing God on levels that make sense to us because of someone else's concepts.

Since we don't want to deal with it or even consider whether these concepts are right or wrong, we walk away completely.

And as a result, we consign ourselves to everlasting spiritual elementary school.

We drop out, forever stuck with somebody else's concepts driving our lives, and our beliefs, and our concepts of God.

If we do form any beliefs or ideas about the divine, they are all driven from a source of antagonism, a source of prejudice against all those things that those people said.

I'm convinced that part of following God is unlearning all the concepts that were ever given to us, even if they were given to us by trusted people. If we are to move on to the next grade, say middle school or junior high, we eventually have to start examining all the beliefs that we've acquired over the years and ask ourselves, "Is this my faith or someone else's?"

The concepts that my girlfriend and I were being driven by were not our own. They were our parents', our teachers', and our spiritual leaders'. We had never felt the need to decide what we believed for ourselves. And so, we had a choice to make. One would end in walking away completely, and the other would lead to spiritual growth.

We chose to stick with it, and because of it, the spiritual bars are constantly being raised. What once was common sense is now uncommon sense.

Point to consider today: If we take an honest look at our belief systems today, are they based out of a source of antagonism against somebody else's beliefs? Are they our own? Are we doing the hard work of developing our own faith? Or, are we content with never seeing past the few ugly trees that blind us from the beauty of the forest?

Wordle Connection

Keep truckin'

Gift Card

One of the gifts I got for Christmas was an Academy gift card.

As I was sitting at church one morning a few weeks ago, they passed the basket around and everyone put their couple bucks in. I reached into my pocket to grab some money, only to find there wasn't any. What I did have was the gift card.

So, when the basket came to me, I secretly put the gift card in.

I glanced over at the people who were collecting the baskets to see if I could see any obvious facial expressions as a result of the unusual gift, but I didn't see any.

I didn't think about it again.

That following Friday, something unusual happened.

As I was sitting outside before my A.A. meeting, a friend walked up and handed me an Academy gift card worth the same amount as the one I'd put in the basket five days before.

Immediately, I got goosebumps as all sorts of thoughts crossed my mind containing words like miracle, OMG!, and God.

I told him the story of how I didn't have any cash on me at church and had put the gift card in the basket. And now, he was giving it back to me.

I don't know if he found it as profound as I did.

We could go down the rabbit trail of a question, "Was it God or was it coincidence?"

But, I don't feel the need to. That question misses the point I think.

I don't normally lean towards the idea that if I give something I'll receive it back a few days later.

However, I do believe that our giving is an indicator of how strongly we believe God will provide us with what we need.

When we give much, we're making a statement. When we give little, we're also making a statement. When we tell everyone how much we're giving, we're making a statement as well. And, when we don't tell anyone about how much we give, we're making a statement.

The point is to give much and to not tell anybody. As much as we'd love to tell the world how awesome it is to know in our bones that God provides, it sounds like boasting to the world. It sounds really spiritual to us but really prideful to others.

The reality is, when we give much and don't tell anybody, the statement we're making to the world is enough without needing to put any words to it. We're saying, "It's because God provides that I can give abundantly."

Out of Gas

As I was sitting on the shore of the Trinity River last night, line in the water waiting for something to bite, a peace came over me that I hadn't felt in awhile.

My mind wasn't racing. My heart was content.

The sky was filled with stars, and I could actually hear the sounds of nature.

It was so good to have a quiet soul and a mind that wasn't constantly telling me what I needed to do next.

I was enjoying the moment, without having to scheme my next to-do.

I'm trying to find a rhythm in life right now. It seems like every day for the past year I've been racing from one thing to another, trying to get stuff done, and wearing myself to the point of exhaustion.

Being busy is a mindset. I don't believe busy-ness has as much to do with what I'm doing as what I'm thinking.

I've had experiences where I'm runnin' and gunnin' all the time, but my mind is at ease and my heart is at peace. And then I've had experiences where I create the time to rest, but my mind won't turn off.

Every day of the week has blended together into one massive to-do list, and before I know it I'm back at work on Monday, wondering where all the time went, feeling extremely unprepared for another week.

So, today I'm gonna do what I've gotten away from - doing nothing.

I talk about it all the time, as if I'm trying to make myself sound like a really good mystic, but the reality is that I haven't done one thing in a long time to remove myself from the technological pleasures I've been afforded, and done something like plant myself on the beach.

I've hit a wall. My well is empty. I need God to fill me up again, and there's no better context for that than on the beach, with a book and an open mind.

Why I Have to Pray Before I Talk on the Phone

The other night I was at my friend's house, and I received a phone call.

It was supposed to be a time of worship, of fellowship, and gratitude,

but as I sat there on the phone and listened to the voice coming from the other end, my heart sank.

My mind went to that horrible wasteland of a place, and I lost the ability to participate in life that night.

The next morning, it was still there. And today, it's still there.

The problem with the phone call wasn't that the news I received was all that bad. It's that I have a mind that will take the smallest comments, disapprovals, and corrections, and turn them into statues that I can worship for days.

And so, the guitar played, the voices sang, and I sat there looking like I was in a deep state of worship. But inside, I was cursing the world. It had wronged me. I was a victim.

I was a failure, a flaw, a fuck up.

And while I was on that phone call, another phone call came, and another, and I couldn't save the world, I couldn't manage my affairs, and I couldn't manage all the responsibilities I had taken on. I wanted to throw my phone against the wall to end the madness. But, I didn't. I acted like everything was fine.

I wouldn't want you to know how things really are would I?

I wouldn't want to expose my weakness, my flaws. I wouldn't want to let all those people down who I've been convincing that I'm Jesus with skin on would I?

It's amazing how a simple phone call can send me on a downhill spiral of silent scorn and depression in a matter of minutes, and it can become a snowball for several days, picking up bits of every little irritation, doubt, and discontentment in its path, until it becomes so big and so massive that it sweeps me right up with all the other clamors it sucks in.

Gratitude? not there.

Worship? goodbye.

I'm convinced that there are people out there who really don't need God. They say it, they believe it, and they are convinced themselves.

There are also people out there who don't need to down a thirty pack in order to drink and be satisfied.

I'm not like either of these people.

I need God, and, I need more than one beer to satisfy me if I'm to take a drink. One's too many and twenty's not enough.

A few years back, I wouldn't have been able to withstand the self-imposed crises of life without taking a drink. It's a miracle I've made it this far. Through all the bullshit. Through all the financial difficulties. Through all the petty problems that my mind blows up into nightmares.

And, part of letting God have the final say in my life right now is, getting rid of this notion in my head that I don't need to do certain things

like

praying before answering the phone.

The unique thing about phone calls is, there's no way of knowing what's going to come from the other end. It could be good. could be bad. could require a complete change of plans. yet, I answer unthinkingly, unprepared for the unexpected.

And what usually happens?

I'm caught off guard.

And the phone call this week led to a litany of phone calls throughout the week.

And each time, I thought I had what it took to handle whatever problem or change of plans was to come. I was only fooling myself.

As stupid as it sounds, I have to pray before each phone call that I make or receive.

I'm tired of being a pinball, uncentered, bouncing around from request to request, being unprepared for the unexpected.

I've been letting too many people and situations take up space in my head, and it's gotten to the point where I woke up this morning entertaining the thought of a nice rum and coke.

And how convenient that I'm about to go to a wedding, on a boat, with no way out . . .

except there is a way out.

I can say no, and run away, and never look back.

But that's the old way of doing things.

Do I want to trust God or trust myself?

Trusting myself would mean to run from my problems, but trusting God would mean facing my problems head on, prayed up, prepared for the unexpected.

And what comes from being prayed up and prepared for the unexpected?

Rest.

I've been restless this week. I've been trying to apply to my petty problems all the will power I can muster, and it just hasn't been enough. My will power has a way of enlarging the problems, when all I had to do in the first place was pray a simple prayer or say a simple thing, or do a simple act.

Simplicity.

Entering God's rest is having the awareness to realize that I can't manage the most miniscule things in life like talking on the phone. And it's being able to pray "thy will be done" as many times each day that it takes to let go of my affinity for attacking life's problems on my own.

Today's Action: Before every phone call, ask God to direct my thinking and to divorce it from self-pity, dishonest, and self-seeking motives.

Why We Have to Stop Sacrificing Pigeons in Order to Make Sense of Jesus

When's the last time you sacrificed a pigeon for lying to your neighbor?

When's the last time you were considered unclean for touching a dead deer that you shot while you were hunting with your friends?

Chances are, you haven't and probably won't. Ever.

But, for the Jewish audience to whom Jesus presented himself to, the Jesus thing made sense. There was a whole litany of requirements for each possible wrongdoing they would have committed at any given moment.

So, when we talk about Jesus, we can't talk about him without talking about what he represented to the people to whom the scriptures were written.

Imagine you live in a world dominated by both political and religious zeal. On one side you have the government vying for every bit of attention it can muster up from you, and on the other side you have a very powerful religious presence on ever corner, trying to get you to walk the straight and narrow.

You're caught in the middle of a constant tension, continuously wondering where you stand.

You want to appease the government, which is demanding you pledge allegiance to it, but you also want to appease the religious leaders who claim they represent the voice of God.

And so, you pay your taxes and sacrifice your goats.

You would never consider the idea that you're possibly living under tyrannical powers, unless someone stepped in and proposed that there was a different way.

Now for sacrifices.

In order to talk about Jesus, we have to talk about sacrifices. For first century Jews, there was this idea that had been carried down through the generations that in order to be redeemed, or atoned, or forgiven, or whatever, then you couldn't let one sin go by without doing something to appease the gods about it.

If you lied, there was a formula for redemption.
If you cheated, there was a system for redemption.
If you stole, there was something to do about it.

Have you ever had a day where you just couldn't do anything right? No matter how hard you tried, you just couldn't seem to create good in the world?

There was also another side to this story of sacrifice.

If you cheated, or lied, or stole, or looked lustfully at a married woman, and didn't make the necessary sacrifices for your wrongdoings, then you were considered unclean or blemished or lost or un-redeemable.

Have you ever heard someone talk about someone else, and they said something like, "That person is un-redeemable"?

What does that person mean? They mean that the other person has done something or said something that was so wrong that they would never get it right.

And this was the kind of world Jesus entered into.

It was a world full of ritualistic rule-following, whether it was at the helm of the Roman government or the temple.

And everybody was held under these rules. It didn't matter who you were. If you were anti-religious you were bound to the same rules. If you were pious, you were bound to the same rules. Not only that, but the government was married to the religious institution, making it even more confusing for a citizen of the Roman Empire.

So, the whole idea of a God becoming a human, and living a perfect life, and dying on a cross, and resurrecting was a completely new, breakthrough concept. Yet, it was eerily familiar to what caesars throughout the centuries had claimed.

Kings and caesars claimed to be sons of God. They claimed divine authority. They demanded worship. They claimed that when they died, they'd sit at the right hand of God.

Yet, it didn't take long for anyone with their right mind to see the way the kings took care of defiant citizens, to see that these kings were anything but holy.

Wherever you were, you were required to make some sort of sacrifice, whether in the form of outlandish taxes or redemptive goats.

Sacrifice was the name of the game.

So, when Jesus entered the scene, and people started talking, and people started watching, the whole idea of sacrifice got turned on its head. All of a sudden, this "son of God, Christ, son of David, and spotless lamb," started talking about sacrificing himself for the sins of mankind.

Not only this, but he started pointing people back to their religious texts, showing them that what they were reading about this whole time was all pointing forward . . . to . . . himself.

If you were living in a neighboring country, and heard that God became man, and then became a sacrifice for humanity so you didn't have to atone for your sins anymore, this would have been a life-changing concept that you wouldn't have been able to keep quiet.

It would have affected your moment-by-moment, sacrifice by sacrifice, way of life. It would have affected the way you worshiped, hung out with friends, viewed the government, and viewed sin.

This concept would have ushered you into a way of life that was now free from having to keep sacrificing, keep buying pigeons, and keep trying to make sure you were in good standing with your God.

And so, fast forward to now. While we don't have pigeons to sacrifice, we do have guilt - which was a very understood concept then, just as understood as it is now.

The sacrifice was a symptom, or a payment, for guilt.

And so, when we talk about guilt, and when we say things like, "I don't feel close to God" or "I need to pray more" or "I need to spend more time with God," we're actually saying, "I need to sacrifice a pigeon because I've failed and need redemption.

And as a result, we pray more, and do more, and go to church more, and do more good things.

And two weeks into it, we're like, "Geez. This is too much! I can't handle this!"

And all of a sudden a deep turmoil enters into our hearts and we don't know what to do. We cry out to God but feel like we're talking to the clouds. We talk to other people, but they just tell us to do more, or do something different.

All the while, we're trying to figure out what to do to atone for our wrongdoings. We're guilty. We're in need of redemption, but we can't find the right pigeon to throw on the altar.

So, the concept we're talking about when we talk about Jesus is this:

A God who made a sacrifice once and for all, so that we wouldn't have to play the sacrifice game ever again.

You mean, I don't have to pray more? Absolutely.
You mean, I don't have to worship better? Yes.
You mean, I don't have to try to get closer to God? Oh yeah.

When the authors of the scriptures write in this language of high priests, and sacrifices, and Jesus dying and resurrecting, it made complete sense to the original audience. Why?

Because they lived in a world full of high priests and sacrifices.

What they needed was an eternal relief from the system that was killing them - the system that started out good but soon turned bad.

They needed a once-and-for-all way out of a system or rules they couldn't hold up themselves.

Why I Believe Jesus Is Believable

As I was sitting with my friend Manny having coffee, a random guy pulled up a chair as he was overhearing our conversation. He asked for a cigarette, and then proceeded to ask questions related to our conversation.

Manny and I were talking about God, or, our conceptions of God.

The main point centered around this reality that both of us have experienced, this reality of having no hope, living in misery and depression and fear, and waiting to die.

Then, as if the gates of hell had broken free, we were somehow lifted out of a state of hopelessness and planted firmly on our feet again, as if some invisible, life-giving force had given us a new lease on life - a life that we were blind to before.

As the guy was listening, Manny began listing off the characteristics of his old life - shot seven times, suicide attempts, stabbed, beaten, a deep-seeded antagonism toward anyone who even mentioned the word God, addiction to alcohol and drugs, drug dealer . . . 

and then . . .

inside of the jail cell, at the end of his rope, something happened. Something came over him. Something awakened his soul, his heart, his mind. 

As Manny and I sat there, I listened and goosebumps jumped about my flesh as I related and looked back over my own story of life, and death, and resurrection.

He had been pronounced dead on several occasions, until modern medical equipment revived him. I had the same experience. In a hospital. Blood soaked with alcohol. Pleading for dear life.

In both of our experiences, we were done. We had dug our own graves. We had used all of our time, effort, and stamina to create for ourselves hell on earth. Yet, this unseen power, this force, this God, wasn't done with us yet. 

Now, as I tell you this story, I'm telling it to you secondhand. I've missed some major points. I haven't captured the reality, the depth and the weight, of what my friend experienced. I'm merely summarizing what I heard that day at the coffee shop.

And, you have a choice now. You can throw it out as nonsense. You can take what I've told you and narrow it down into your own meaning. You can disregard the things that are hard to swallow.

But, there's also a minor problem. Since I am translating this story, you don't have the facts because I wasn't present for any of these events that I am translating. Why? Because I'm telling you what I heard.

I didn't see any of it. I didn't experience any of it.

Here's the catch though. I had to believe the story myself in order to tell you about it. Even though I wasn't there to experience what my friend told me, I believed it enough to think that it would be good for someone else to hear. Perhaps the ears that this story fell upon would hear it, and let it soak in, and it would surface to consciousness at some point in time when it needed to be rehashed.

At the bare minimum, I translate this story because I believe it. Why? Because I've had similar experiences to what I heard, which fueled my ability to believe it. In fact, I didn't even consider its validity - whether it was actually true or not.

And that's what I'm getting at.

Every day, we hear stories. And, for the most part, we don't spend time considering whether they're true or not. The norm is to hear something, then believe it.

We hear there's this thing called ObamaCare. We hear that global warming is happening. We heard at some point in time that some "fathers" came together and drafted a constitution. We hear about wars in Syria. Yet, we readily believe these things unquestioningly.

We don't worry about if these news events get lost in translation. We don't consider the validity of the stories.

If we spend so little time questioning our beliefs in the events that led to us, as citizens of this country, living in this nation, then why do we spend so much time beating our heads against the wall, reluctant to believe the stories we find in scriptures about Jesus?

Is belief not the faith in things that can't be seen or heard or touched?

Just like our own national histories, can we touch the people who took part in the intricate details of its formation? Can we talk to them? Can we hear them?

What has happened with the scriptures over time is, the message has lost its beauty, its creativity, its narrative genius.

What was originally a secondhand description of real events, real peeople, and real time, has had its life sucked out. The beauty of belief has been hijacked by people who want you to accept as true things that can't possibly be accepted as true.

Belief is what inspires us to test, to examine, to search.

But, when people who teach about the scriptures do it in a way that sucks every bit of belief and curiosity and creativity and doubt and question out of the text, and replace it with an infallible, black and white, this-is-the-right-way-to-think-about-this sort of literalism,  the audience gets

turned off,

and discouraged,

and less hopeful,

and more doubtful,

and loses trust in the ability of the scriptures to do what they're supposed to do,

which is inspire . . . and instill hope . . . and open our eyes and hearts and minds to something we've never seen before.

It's impossible to skip out on the part of our wiring that invokes us to question, and believe, and doubt, and jump straight to black-and-white thinking.

That is why I believe Jesus is believable. It was written by someone, handed down, talked about, conversed about, and it's still being

talked about, and discussed, and questioned.

The stories surrounding this Jesus are still churning on in real time and real space, being talked about by real people.

I can believe something that creates so much attention and tension.

Why Common Sense Solutions aren't Always the Best Solutions

Ten years ago, I was on a mission trip in Costa Rica. I had saved up what I thought was the perfect amount of money to live for six weeks. What I didn't think about was the fact that my drinking wouldn't stop just because I was out of the United States.

And, I didn't budget that in.

And so, halfway through the trip, I was out of money.

What do you do when you're out of money and you have no other way to get it?

Take out loans.

So, I picked up the phone, got on the automated line with my credit union, and had money wired within 24 hours.

And, in two weeks I was out of pocket again. So, I repeated the loan process.

Not only was I living in the delusion that my drinking would stop based on geographical location, but I was under the impression that common sense would answer my financial problems.

If something's wrong, take the first logical solution to fix it.

What I failed to see was that my drinking was out of hand, and that I was taking out loans that would shadow me for years to come. But all I wanted was a quick fix. And I got it.

What I've learned since then (after many times of doing this same thing) is that if I look a little deeper (assuming that I'm able to), I'll find that my problems are all spiritual.

While not having money is a very physical problem at surface level, there is a whole realm of spiritual makeup lying underneath.

Car trouble. Breakups. Unemployment. Bad hygiene. Lack of communication. Broken relationships.

Underneath all of the problems we face, no matter how great or minute, is a world of spiritual information about ourselves. And, the reason so many of us fail to sink to these depths is, it's just so damn hard to wait.

Right now, I'm without a car. It's totaled. I don't know what's gonna happen. I don't know if the insurance is gonna do anything.

Common sense tells me to go take out a loan and get on with it.

But, there's this uncommon sense, this inner voice, that keeps telling me to wait, to be patient, to see what's in store.

And, it's taking everything I have to listen to this uncommon voice.

Why is it so hard to not jump after the first solution that comes to mind? Because it's unnatural to let problems linger.

When I hurt, I want medicine immediately. When I'm angry, I want peace immediately. When I'm afraid, I want courage immediately. When I don't have a ride, I want to get to where I need to go immediately.

There's a whole world of people out there - called homeless - who have a much greater understanding of this concept than I do. There's a whole treasure chest full of wisdom waiting to be had there. They have to wait because in order to take a simple step, they have to take five or ten more steps than we do just to do the simplest things like go to the store.

The God I believe doesn't think like a human being. This God doesn't think like a boss, a parent, a teacher, a pastor, a president, or a financial advisor.

How many times do we find ourselves applying this statement to our problems: "Surely God would want me to do . . . "

While it sounds spiritual, we immediately fuse our common sense solutions with what we think God would do, but what it looks like is what everybody else does in this situation.

I have a really hard time believing that the answers God would have for whatever situations come up are status quo answers.

So, a healthy thing to do when facing any problematic situation is to make a handwritten or mental list of the first solutions that come to mind. 

For me right now (in the problem of not having a car), the list looks like:

Get a loan. Set up monthly payments. Drain the mutual fund. Drain my vacation pay.

Once the list is made, fold it up and put it away for safekeeping. Now, start praying and see what happens. Chances are that certain people are gonna be talking. Random people are going to show up. Seemingly random opportunities are going to present themselves.

Write these down. You'll most likely notice that these things are much different than the original list?

Why?

Because this human, natural, survival mode way of thinking has been put on hold. The need for immediate gratification has been put to rest for a little bit,

and,

when this happens, a whole world of opportunity shows up that we would never have known about had we gone with the first options.

Now, we have entered a realm of spirituality that involves characteristics like trust, faith, patience, and adventure.

Instead of having common sense, logical solutions to physical, logical problems,

we have

inspired spiritual solutions to inherently spiritual problems.

We find that the solutions to our problems are not as predictable as we once thought they were, and along the way we're catapulted into a way of thinking that has the possibility of

completely . . .

rocking . . .

our worlds.

Why the Phrase "Witness for Jesus" Doesn't Make Logical Sense

The phrase "be a witness for Christ" has always baffled me.

For one, when I think of witness, I think of a courtroom. I think of a witness stand. I think of evidence. I think of a defense attorney standing in front of a judge with a gun in a ziploc bag, showing the jury the actual gun that was used at the murder scene.

Being a witness means being a spokesperson for a firsthand account of something.

Yet, when we read in the scriptures about Jesus telling his disciples that they're to be his witnesses, we can easily observe that

he's telling them

and

they're listening to him

and

they're watching him

and

they've been with him.

We're reading something that someone wrote about people witnessing the words and the works of Jesus. The stories are set in real time and real space with real people.

Fast forward to now.

How does one be a witness for someone who isn't here, right now, in real time and real space?

Baffling, isn't it?

I'll be the first to admit that using logic to make sense of this phrase "be my witnesses" will not go far. In fact, it'll lead you right down a rabbit trail if you try to understand it through logic.

And that's where faith comes in. And, when I say faith, I'm lumping this word into the same grouping as belief and trust. The common ground that all these words share is the characteristic of intangiblility.

What do I mean by this?

You can't touch or see faith. You can't taste belief. You can't measure trust.

Which means,

being a witness for Jesus requires having faith and/or belief and/or trust in what Jesus represents.

How do we know what Jesus represents?

The Bible - which happens to be pretty accessible to everyone.

Now, back to faith and the results of its application, and how it's connected to being a witness.

If faith and belief and trust are all intangible actions, then we have to expect that the results are intangible as well, right?

So, when you hear the phrase "be my witness," we're saying that to be a witness in this context isn't like a courtroom drama where all the evidence is laid out in front of the judge.

This kind of witness is different because we don't actually have empirical evidence. The benefits we receive from this kind of witnessing are inward. And here is where phrases like "peace beyond all understanding" come in.

While I'm not convinced that Jesus is here in person, I'm convinced that believing in the Jesus I read about in the scriptures, and believing in what he says and does, and then trying to do it, catapults me into an intangible reality of peace, joy, and freedom that can't be explained or shown or put on a slideshow.

I can't show anybody how my faith led to another person's healing or how my faith led to my getting a job after being unemployed for four years or how my faith led to my friend getting sober.

What my faith in Jesus does is this:

It gives me peace and tolerance and patience and love (all intangible realities that only I experience)

so that

I'm able to step into action. I can visit the hospital to see the person who's sick and I can not lose my mind in the job hunting process and I can help my friend get sober.

So, being a witness for Jesus starts with personally realized, intangible, divine realities and leads to very human, practical, and tangible action.

If I were to tell you that Jesus saved me from something, you'd probably be pretty confused right? You'd probably wonder, "Where is this Jesus?" or "Can you prove that" or "You're out of your mind!"

And honestly, I wouldn't have a logical rebuttal. It would all be based on the intangibles of my faith.

You would win the argument because I don't have the empirical evidence that you're looking for.

Now, if I told you that I have an unbelievable amount of peace as a result of my belief in Jesus, it may hold a little more weight. Because now we're talking about a belief system, something of which everyone has access to.

And here's how it works.

Right now, I have no car and no savings. My car was totaled. I don't save money because I give a lot of it away because it's one of the little ways that I'm convinced that believing in Jesus leads to peace and joy.

In spite of no car and no savings, I'm not worried. At all. I have this inner thing inside of me that says everything is gonna work out. And, although I should be saving money for a car right now I'm most likely going to keep giving it away because that's another one of the ways I'm convinced that believing in Jesus leads to peace and joy.

So, when I do get a car (or a truck, or a bike, or a scooter), I'm probably not going to say something like "Jesus gave me a car." I will say that I believe in what I read about Jesus, and what I read about is always being on the lookout for giving to people who need it, in spite of what my circumstances are at any given time.

So, it's not my faith that gets me a car.

It's my faith that allows me to believe that everything's going to work out so I can continue to not save but give and receive the intangible realities of peace, joy, and freedom in the middle of otherwise chaotic and lifechanging circumstances.

Hope this all makes sense to the person who needs to read this.

Sick Bed

These last two nights were awful.

I had a splitting headache, my stomach had extremely sharp pains, and I could barely sleep. I caught a couple hours here and there, only to wake up to a stabbing sensation in my abdomen.

I left work early yesterday and went straight to my bed.

But, at 1:45 this morning, my eyes opened and no words can explain the feeling of sickness leaving the body. It's one of the best feelings ever. I was relieved from whatever was going on in my body.

I'm energized and ready to go now, ready to work, ready to knock out some to-do's.

But while I was confined to the bed, I observed a few things.

I needed someone to take care of me.
I didn't have the energy to do anything, including praying or talking on the phone.
I was powerless.

It put me in a position where I could no nothing in my own power. It would take a few minutes just to get out of bed, or use the bathroom, or walk to the next room.

I need to remember what it's like to be sick, because the frame of mind that I'm in when I'm confined to the bed and hurting is very close to humility. Dependent, lack of energy, and powerless.

What would it look like to go into each day with the characteristics that I showed while I was in bed?

What would it look like if I went into the day needing someone to take care of me and realizing that I don't have what it takes?

I find that when my physical well-being or emotional well-being are off balance, I'm less hostile to the world around me. Why? Because I have obvious problems, and it drains my ego to the point that I don't need to try and control anyone or anything around me. I've got problems of my own to worry about.

But, when all's good and fine with the body and the emotions, I'm more likely to be on collision with everybody and everything. I think I've got all my stuff together, and I can start controlling my world one person at a time.

How hard it is to carry a mind of humility when the body and emotions are working fine!

Maybe my mantra today should be: "I'm sick and I need you God."

Maybe repeating that over and over will keep me in a posture of humility, less likely to let my ego take over.

Why Helping Others Is A Reflection of How Much We Need God

I've been working with a friend for the last couple months, helping him get sober and stay sober by showing him exactly what I was shown when I got sober.

And there are these moments where all I want to do is sleep, or read, or just curl up in my bed and lock myself away from the world.

For a couple months before I met him, I was starting to get depressed. I couldn't get out of myself for the life of me. I just couldn't open my eyes wide enough to see anyone's life other than my own. And then, I met him.

In this whole journey, which has been chaotic, maddening, joyful, and crazy, I've had the chance to "dig my toes in," as he says often. I've learned that if I truly want to help anybody, then I have to acknowledge that I need help myself. I don't have it together, much less do I have the power, the stamina, or the patience to spend time helping someone else who has more needs than my brain can comprehend.

If I don't realize that I need help myself when the time comes to answer the call, then I have the tendency to think not in terms of whether I want to help or not, but whether I need to help or not.

Saying I don't want to help somebody means that I've spent the time considering, and whatever the reason is, I've concluded that I have something else I want to be doing in that moment.

But saying I don't need to help somebody means that I have inwardly acknowledged that I am full of God, living high on spiritual fat, and don't have anything to learn or receive.

So, helping others is a reflection of how much I need God. If I think I've got it all together, then chances are I'm going to say inwardly I don't need to help you, more often.

I have another friend who lives in Houston, and he's really lonely. He calls all the time and wants us to come hang out with him. I've becomes so hardened to his requests that I screen his calls and get frustrated every time his name shows up on my phone. I don't need God there. I'm full.

It's easy to look at opportunities to help people in terms of their needs, staying oblivious to our own spiritual starvation. How often we come across people in need, and we fail to take the few moments to remind ourselves, "God, I need you just as much as this person needs me (or my money, or my stuff, or my clothes, or a ride, or my time, or my ears, etc.)"

This last month, I've been stretched to my limits, and I'm still stretching. On the other hand, I've been starving spiritually but getting nourished in those times that I don't really want to but realize that I need to.

These opportunities to step out of myself are constant reminders that I need God more than I think I do. I need compassion more than I think I do. I need grace more than I think I do.

Fire!

Just finished the post party.  It's 2:35 a.m.  The post party was with Redbud Circulars.  The party was with mc².  It's too late to really try and express, but just wanted to say thank you and glad everybody had a good time.  I did.  I think, for a split moment, that I almost joined in a music session.  Jon said, "I think Keith just got the angel sprinkles on that one."  I think I may have. 

Happy New Year!

Why Giving Up Stuff Can Be More About Worshiping Someone Else's Ideas

As I was sitting around the fire last night with some friends, it came time for theological question time.

The spotlight was put on me to throw out some profound question that had to do with God or spirituality, but I just couldn't think in time.

As I was processing, one of the girls spoke up and threw this one out: Does everybody have one thing that they're never willing to give up?

Her example was giving up her bed for someone else. As she talked about why it was so hard, I thought of one thing that I would never give up.

But, I couldn't seem to get away from the question underneath the question - which was

Where did this notion of "giving up stuff" even come from?

For me, I never even considered the subject relevant until I started reading the Sermon on the Mount.

Some people say God wills it, others say Jesus said it, and still others say it's a good thing to do. It's part of being a good person.

In reality, when push comes to shove, we have this tendency to give up stuff, don't we?

Whether it's the friend who's going through some hard stuff and needs some of our time or the homeless person on the street who needs some of our money or the stray dog in the yard that needs some of our attention,

We all have this thing inside us that draws us to give up something at any given moment - whether we want to or not.

But, then there's this other side to the story of giving stuff up, and it sadly happens more I think within the evangelical community than anywhere else. It's this idea of "God says to do it, so I should, because God says to do it, so I should, because God says to do it . . . "

And so, for some people including myself, we develop this whole concept of giving stuff up based on the objective viewpoint that we should because God says to do it.

And then we give stuff up, and we don't want to. And afterwards, we regret it or maybe we feel happy about it or maybe we feel like God is pleased or maybe we feel that God's anger just got withheld a little bit longer. 

The whole concept of giving stuff up becomes an institution without a face. The actual people who we give stuff up for become objects who receive. Our focus becomes on satisfying the need within us to fill up the something that's missing through giving stuff up.

The problem I have with this giving-stuff-up concept isn't that it's a good concept. The problem I have is that sometimes I can do stuff that I really don't believe in. My heart can be totally out of it, yet my hands and feet can be totally in it.

And that's the real tension right?

It's not what we're giving up or how much, but how we're doing it.

Lets be honest. If we don't want to give something up, we're not going to right?

And, if we do want to give something up, we're going to right?

As humans, we're not wired to continuously do things that are against our inner desires. We've all had the family member or friend who kept asking for money and gas and food and even though we kept giving and giving and giving we eventually just . . . fell . . . apart. We couldn't do it anymore.

And we had to say no. And we may have tried to rationalize the no by saying things like God wouldn't want this for me or God wouldn't want this for him/her or simply this isn't right.

But what if the whole concept of giving stuff up wasn't supposed to be about anyone else but ourselves in our efforts to tap into a freedom that was paradoxically found in having less?

What if the whole time we were giving stuff up, we realized that we had been worshiping an institution, or a concept, or an idea of a god who demanded its people to give up stuff in order to please it? And all this time, as we were doing what we thought this god demanded, we were finding that we weren't finding life, but turmoil?

What if the whole concept of giving up stuff was supposed to be about tapping into a source of life that is full of energy and vitality, and we didn't necessarily have to beat our heads against the wall about what people were doing with the stuff we gave them or where our stuff was going or how it was being used, but in the end we found that with less stuff we were more dependent personally on a God who wanted us and wanted relationship with us

and

we just couldn't see it because we were so busy trying to give up stuff.

I believe that the God I believe in is the same God that pulls on your heart strings when you have a friend in need.

And this God loves us so much that he/she doesn't want us to think that we have to give up stuff in order to please or appease him/her

but

knows that with less stuff we find more freedom to live in peace, joy, and love.

What is the Bible? (Part 2 of the new Rob Bell series)

Part 2: Flood

Let’s talk about floods. Because the ancients did. The Sumerians told flood stories, the Mesopotamians told flood stories, the Babylonians told flood stories-stories about water and its destructive power to wipe out towns, cities, civilizations, and people were not unusual in the ancient world. 

There were even stories about people building boats to survive these floods.

In these flood stories, all that water coming to destroy humanity was understood to be divine judgment for all of the ways people had made a mess of things. The gods are angry, it was believed, and a flood was their way of clearing the deck to start over. 

For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth…[Genesis 7]

So when we come to a story about a flood in the book of Genesis, it’s not that unusual. This flood story is like the other flood stories because this god is like the other gods-fed up with the depravity of humanity, unleashing divine wrath in the form of a flood.

But then this story does something strange. It ends with the divine insistence that’s never going to happen again. 

And then this God brings a rainbow and a promise and a covenant.

 

A what?

A covenant. A covenant is an agreement, an oath, a relational bond between two beings who belong to each other. 

This was not how the other flood stories ended. In those stories, the gods are angry and everybody dies and the gods are satisfied. End of story.

But this god is different. This god commits to living with people in a new way, a way in which life is preserved and respected.

So why was this particular story told?Why did this story matter?Why did it endure?

Several reasons.

First, imagine if you had no pictures of earth from outer space, no weather reports, no Google images, no airplanes-imagine if you’d never been more than a few miles from where you were born. And then imagine water-massive, undulating, swirling, terrifying water-coming at you out of nowhere and wiping your entire life away. 

Imagine what that would do to your psyche.

You would do what we do whenever we suffer-you’d look for causes. And in the ancient world, it was generally agreed upon that the forces that caused these kind of things were the gods who had had it up to here with humans and all their backstabbing, depraved ways and had decided to unleash their wrath.

That’s how people saw the world.

But then there’s a twist: this story starts in a familiar way, a way that people would have heard before, but then it heads in a different direction. A very different direction, a direction involving rainbows and oaths and covenants.

This was not how people talked about the gods.The gods are pissed off-that’s how people understood the gods. 

But this story, this story is about a God who wants to relate-A God who wants to save-A God who wants to live in covenant…

This story is about a new view of God.

Not a God who wants to wipe people out,but a God who wants to live in relationship.

So yes, it’s a primitive story. Of course it is. It’s a really, really old story.It reflects how people saw the word and explained what was happening around them.

But to dismiss this story as ancient and primitive is to miss that at the time this story was first told it was a mind blowing new conception of a better, kinder, more peaceful God who’s greatest intention for humanity is not violence but love.

It’s primitive, but it’s also really, really progressive.

One more thought, this one about unicorns.(How great was that sentence?)

You’ll often hear people talk about stories from the Bible such as this one with a certain rolling of the eyes, as in can you believe people still believe this stuff?

Much of this cynicism is due to the way stories like these have been told-often by well meaning religious people trying to prove that there actually were two animals at a time that went in to an ark and 

Yes, the boat really was big enough 

and 

Of course God had a plan for where to put the elephant poo.

That sort of thing. What this stilted literalism does, in its efforts to take the story seriously, is often miss the point of the story. This story was a major leap forward in human consciousness, a breakthrough in how people conceived of the divine, another step toward a less violent, more relational understanding of the divine.

It starts like the other flood stories started,but then it goes somewhere different.Somewhere new.Somewhere better…

Now from floods, let’s talk about fish.Specifically, fish that swallow people for three days and then vomit them up.

Next - What is the Bible? Part 3: Fish

R Bell. (2013, November 6). What is the Bible? Part 2. Flood. Retrieved from http://robbellcom.tumblr.com/post/66107373947/what-is-the-bible 

Unlocking the Mystery

On New Year's Eve, I sat at my friend's house listening to him play the guitar as his wife sang along. I didn't have any words.

I was tired, weary, and just felt like I had nothing to contribute.

So, after awhile at about midnight, he asked me, "Do you want to go on a treasure hunt?"

After asking him what exactly he was talking about, I said yes.

The instructions were: Ask God to reveal something to you. Then, go out and find it.

Simple enough, right?

So, we sat there in silence. The things that came to my mind were: a woman with a child standing on a doorstep, the name Stephanie, and the word pink.

After sitting in silence, he wrote all of our things down on an index card. Added to mine were a lime green, bubbly jacket, the name of a local sports bar, and a dead horse. Simple enough, right?

We got into the car and drove off, not knowing what to expect, but expecting something.

Pulling up to the parking lot of the bar (which happened to be where I took my last drink five years ago), we smoked a cigarette and pondered what in the world we were doing. As we thought, and strategized, and procrastinated, we finally told each other that this wasn't gonna work if we thought about it any longer.

So, we got out and headed in. There was a $10 cover charge. We thought to ourselves, "Surely God wouldn't want us to pay $20 to do this." But, we decided that if we trusted, we'd have to pay the money.

As soon as we entered, I saw that the bouncer was my old neighbor. The last time I'd seen him was the last time I'd been at this bar - drunk. As I walked up to him I said hi, and bent down to give him a hug in his wheelchair. I told him I hadn't had a drink in five years, and that I was coming to see if anything had changed.

I thought we would stick out like sore thumbs as everyone drank their beer and sang their songs, but nobody really noticed us. So, we grabbed a bar stool and took a seat, surveying the crowd, looking for Stephanie, pink, a lime green bubbly jacket, and a dead horse.

Right off the bat, we saw a girl in a pink hoodie. "Is that Stephanie?" we asked each other. "There's only one way to find out," I said.

So, my friend walked up to her table and asked her if her name was Stephanie. She abruptly said no.

So, we ordered Cokes and waited longer to see what or who would show up. There were clues everywhere. A lime green coozie, a horseshoe on the arcade golf game, a lady in a pinkish jacket.

But, nothing stood out as the thing.

After about an hour of sitting and watching and waiting, we decided that what we were looking for wasn't at this bar. So, we went to another bar.

We grabbed a bar stool, sat down, and surveyed the crowd. We listened to drunk karoake (and this was the last bar I got kicked out of). We spotted a girl wearing pink. The problem was, we couldn't find a window of time between her makeout sessions with her girlfriend to ask her if her name was Stephanie.

So, we waited, and watched, and listened.

My friend ran into an acquaintance that he knew, and they talked for a little bit.

After awhile, we decided that it was time to go. We didn't find what we were looking for, but found something else.

We were expectant. If there's anything I learned from this outing, it was that it's much better to be expectant than to not be.

At the first bar, the thing I was expecting didn't happen, but I got to hug my handicapped friend. Maybe he was who I was supposed to see. Maybe all the clues were supposed to just get me started so I would end up walking into that bar, on that night, to see that friend.

Maybe at the second bar, the clues were supposed to help us just get on our way, and to intersect my friend with his old acquaintance. Maybe those two people were who we were supposed to meet. Maybe we were supposed to do more. Maybe we were supposed to pray for them. Maybe we were supposed to encourage them.

Who knows?

It's way more fun to expect God to make something happen than to not. 

When we're expecting something powerful, divine, weird, life-giving, and mind-blowing to happen in the monotony of life, our senses are heightened and we're looking for where God is moving. We're moving along lines that aren't our own. It sounds really absurd. We both felt that we were a little crazy, but in the end we had this feeling that we were doing something right. We were trying our best to follow this God we couldn't see, couldn't hear, and couldn't touch.

We were trying to unlock a mystery. We were going to any length to have a spiritual experience.